Danny’s Techdirt Profile

About Danny

Dr. Daniel Mittleman is an Associate Professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media. His research focuses on collaboration engineering, virtual teamwork, and the design of both collaboration and learning spaces. His projects include investigation of collaboration aboard US Navy ships; development of team processes to support architectural planning, collaborative writing, and brainstorming; and the design of technology-supported collaboration facilities. Dr. Mittleman holds an AB and MBA from Washington University (St. Louis) and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, and is currently Past Chair and Webmaster of the Environmental Design Research Association.

I used to work for a company you all have heard of. (Check my LinkedIn profile if you really care which one.) Back in the day (October 1989) our Bay Area office was destroyed by an earthquake you may also have heard about. Live and backup data within the office was destroyed. The policy at the time (now policy is very different) was not to rely on any local offsite backup facility as that could just as easily be destroyed by a quake. Rather, the office had a deal with a taxi driver to come every evening after daily backups and carry around a copy in the trunk of his cab. Next night he'd be back to swap disk packs and would carry the new copy.

The office recovered from the quake using data from the disk packs in his cab.

As to Tim's post: I'm a Democrat who has supported Obama from early on (though break with him on several issues of TechDirt focus). Despite my general support, I agree with everything Tim wrote--something does not smell right here. They do need to recover those emails no matter what is on them.

As Mike pointed out, this is correlation, not causation. And it is not at all unusual that Representatives vote more or less aligned with the lobbies that support them: most all representatives and all lobbies.

The system may be broken, but there isn't anything sinister beyond that going on here.

1. In this case the IP addresses are being triangulated with significant additional information; and
2. The security expert (Neville) was careful to note that one can't say for sure the user was John Steele; rather that it was someone who had access to his accounts (several of which were accessed from the same IP address.)

The firm is taking very reasonable steps to protect their data (and their clients' data). Agreed the security risk is the employee, not the technology. But they rightly recognize that no amount of training will completely eliminate employees mistakes, especially since the scammers keep inventing new ruses.

And the firm is taking the reasonable step of mounting a new network outside their firewall to support employee access to personal accounts. So the firm isn't trying to wall off access completely during the workday, an action that would be problematic on several dimensions.

I'd say the overreaction here is on the part of our poster, not on the part of the law firm.

Colin, I suggest clearly differentiating the violation of copyright from the violation of plagiarism. As I am sure you know, they are not the same thing; and you also know that an academic is much more worried about being caught plagiarizing than violating copyright.

Regarding copyright: of course you have registered your copyright by now; if not, do so. As you already do, encourage people to link back to your site. As you probably know, there is no single clear cut test for fair use. What you might do (though it would have zero ti limited validity if ever tested in court) is lay out what you consider fair use to be for your document in the context of a website. Perhaps then, most would follow your guidelines and for those who do not, you would have a clear fallback position to guide them to make things right. A position that is less than your current absolutist position. You might also consider offering to license use of the document for a reasonable fee. Doing so, while it will never raise you significant revenue, will help establish a value should your copyright be violated--though asking price does not automatically constitute real market value. And it will make the free linking to option appear more desirable to many sites.

Regarding plagiarism: I think, in as friendly a way possible, you should make clear that you find non-attributioned borrowing of your work, subsets of your work, and closely paraphrased versions of your work unacceptable. And you should clearly state you will pursue plagiarism cases against individuals and institutions who plagiarize this work.

I think that will provoke much more notice among your academic audience than either the current or a revised copyright notice will.

ASIDE: After I saw your story on Facebook last week, I recommended to a conference I am close to that we link to your site as I think your poster advice is great--and we have many grad student first time presenters who are not at all clear on how to organize or present a poster. Email me if you care to track who this is.

At this point those lawyers are not going to sue. They are probably having a talk with their clients about that clear WayBack Machine proof that the article existed long before 2005 on Colin's site and the risks they take on for themselves by suing.

All they got for their dollars to the law firm was a nasty legalgram that apparently both pissed off and scared Colin. They have got to be playing defense now.

And the Purdue University General Counsel's Office can't be very pleased either.

If Colin's lawyer sends a nastygram to both the Center AND to Purdue, I bet the Center backs down (without admitting guilt most likely), and says, in effect, no harm, no foul. At that point Colin needs to ask to be made whole for the expenses he has taken on in return for not going after them (assuming he previous,y registered his copyright and has good chance of collecting statutory damages, as the real financial damage is minimal.)

Griffith movie was "A Face in the Crowd" (1957) in which he played a disillusioned drifter (according to Wikipedia). I might have used the word grifter.

In not this in a follow on comment as multi-tasking sucks on my iPad. I'd have lost my comment draft had I tried. Which, I guess is indirectly a testimonial for the Galaxy Pad--the object behind this whole [redacted by editor] commercial post.

If you ever wondered what a young Andy Griffith did to merit having a TV show named for him, this is one of two things that made him famous (the other was a dark movie role of a smooth southern con man in the big city).

The routine is every bit as good as George Carlin's comparison of football to baseball.